Season for finishing

This is the season for finishing things.  The trees are finishing their leaves, the garden is finishing its fruit, I am finished cleaning the house (aaah! that was so funny.  I crack myself up.)  Get ready, I should blog more often.  This post is heavy-laden.

Finishing the Apple Cider Vinegar.  I keep blowing through my bottles of Bragg's ACV because I add a tablespoon per gallon of water for the dog, chickens and rabbits.  I think it helps them fend off icky things - who knows.  But I was about to give up on my dosings b/c the good, raw stuff is too expensive. Here's my attempt at making it myself - easy, not hardly stinky.  I'm sold.  I got seconds from the orchard.  They aren't organic (which is bad b/c any pesticides will keep them from making good fermenty vinegar) but since they were the ugly ones, it's likely they got little spray (hence their ugliness).  So we put a half-bushel's worth of cores and peels into that 5-gal bucket, topped it with warm water and banded a thin dishtowel over the top to keep out fruit flies.  It sat in my kitchen for 3 weeks (I am impatient - 6 wks seems ideal), then I strained it out and filled my jars with that appley sour liquid!!  I had to do it, we were out of Bragg's.  But since I think it has more vinegar potential, I saved the mushy scraps, jarred it up with more water and towel-lids, and made a pretty vinegar display next to my mudroom sink.

 Finishing the soup beans.  We didn't weed and we didn't spray and we didn't water.  Hmm, not ideal.  But still we got a load of beans.  We planted 4 kinds:  Black Turtle, Calypso, Jacob's Cattle, and Pinto. We hardly got any of the latter two - maybe because the cows got out one night and munched them?  Don't know.   I do know that this is not cost-effective.  We do this because our daddy thinks it is cool that we can grow soup beans.  We do this to also prove that a lot of great learning/school can occur while one person reads aloud and the rest shell beans.  Also lots of hilarity.  Much more effective than trying to do school while canning tomatoes.

11yr old Peter's hand.

These little hands are cuter, Anna is our best sorter and also our best bean-feeler.

Two cheerful girl shellers.

This is how we dry them on towels on our deck.  Sometimes the shells burst open and the beans fly.

Finishing the hay drama.  We bought a very old, very used set of hay equipment.  I'm still baffled by which is the rake, the crusher-thingy, the cutter-part.  No clue.  I only know I was whispering the h-a-t-e word because my husband was so heart-achy as he and his farm-friends struggled to make the darn equipment work!!  This grass-fed business is hard when it doesn't rain.  So, here is a picture of a beautiful little steer named Tank who is watching his farm-daddies toss 43 beautiful bales of our OWN hay into our barn.

Finishing the chickens.  (warning, don't scroll further if you don't like to eat chicken) We are almost done with our first grandiose chicken raising.  We raised 48 cornish cross and 30 color range meat chickens in pasture-pens.  The spent their first 3 weeks inside (safe and warm), then went out to meet the world of fresh grass and bugs.  Twice every day we (mostly me) hauled jugs of water (ACV included!) up to the pasture, scooted the pens to fresh grass, and refilled their water and feed.  We loved those chickens.  They loved me the most.  We sold all but 5 cornish cross - the color range go in 2 weeks, I'm trying to remember not to sell all of them.  The goal was to pay for our own freezer-filling and make a little money.  I kept forgetting about the freezer-filling when our friends were cheerfully asking if they could buy some.  Next year, we'll just need to do more!!

Ruby is a very skillful chicken-deliverer.  See she's not even worried that the chicken is about to reach up and peck her hand.

I like butchering chickens.  It is simple and satisfying to see your clean bird, ready to eat.  I think it's appropriate that we know what our food ate, where it came from and who made it ready-to-eat.  This is right and good.  Anna and I talked to the Cornish Cross the night before butcher.  We agreed they were probably very excited for their big day - fulfilling the purpose for which they were created.  Anna says she will butcher when she gets bigger.  For now, she swings with her cousins.  We had 7 adults and 15 kids at our house "helping" on butcher-day.  No wonder we think it's fun.

The super-awesome chicken plucker.  See all those feathers?!  This is the men's department - they bleed, dip, pluck and pull. 

This is my table - I like to eviscerate.  It is a personal challenge to get all the inside out  in one piece.  See me concentrating?!  Most of the kids tried this - it's so cool to figure out their organs and see how their system is different from ours.
Chickens are beautifully-made creatures - even these hybrids.

This is my farmer.  He thinks the beard is good camo for bow-season.  We agree to disagree.  I love it when he looks at me like that because it means he thinks my jokes are funny.  This is a serious compliment.

This pen has 7 color range roosters.  These chickens aren't hybrids with giant breasts - they are happy normal birds that don't tip over because of the afore-mentioned giant breast.  They do normal things like crow and scratch for bugs and have beautiful feathers. This one is peaking up at me to say, "water-lady, where did you take my water?"  

Salsa-licious

That's a funny title, makes my kids laugh.  Salsa-licious!  And this is a funny post because I haven't tasted it yet!!  It's too spicy - would be dangerous.  But, this salsa wins because it isn't salsa-soup - it's beautiful, lovely - so it wins.

Ruby, my expert tomato-dipper.

My sweet, beloved friend Jess H gave me this recipe.  She makes it every year.  We laugh, because we both like adaptable recipes.  It is essential that substitutions can be made.  We have too many kids to go to the grocery store just because we want to make salsa!!  Substitute freely!!

Salsa

5 gallon bucket of tomatoes (who cares what kind!)  Peel, core and quarter after doing the hot-water-dip-trick.  Jess says you needn't quarter - just squeeze them with your hand as you plop them in the giant pot.  To reduce wetness of salsa, consider squeezing the tomatoes a bit for extra seeds and juice to go into your chicken bowl (oh, this is a compost bowl - my chickens love tomatoes).  Start the tomatoes cooking on low/med heat while you get busy chopping the rest:

6 banana peppers

4-6 green peppers

4-5 medium onions

garlic

cilantro

hot peppers to taste

Add above to tomatoes and stir well.

I used the "garden" method of picking every ready pepper in my garden, donning gloves and chopping them ALL up.  Hence the too-spicy for anyone but husband results.  Jess says hers is always "mild".  That's how I'll do the next batch so the rest of us can also munch.   

  

Before the tomatoes boil, carefully spoon out about 1 C of liquid into a bowl so that you can stir in

1 C cornstarch

1 C apple cider (or white) vinegar

1/2 C sugar

2 T salt

If your reserved liquid is too hot, you'll get lumps.  (I prefer to have less liquid in my salsa, not more, so you don't want to add water just so you can dissolve the cornstarch.)  Stir, stir, stir as you add the cornstarch mixture to your big pot and watch it thicken!!  Woo-hoo!!

Now for the illegal part.  Do not tell the FDA.  Quick, heat up another pot with water enough for a quart jar (or whatever kind you'll use) to lay down in and be submerged.  Get a cute, helpful girl (at least 7 1/2 years old, per Ruby) to help you with that fun magnet wand that retrieves the canning lids from the hot water.  Submerge your first jar and lid (being careful not to splash the cute girl perched on the stool nearby).  Fill your hot jar with your hot salsa, put on the hot lid, screw on the ring, place the jar upside down on your counter for a beautiful display of salsa.  Leave it alone until tomorrow, it will be all sealed and ready for winter-time munchings!!  This made 11 quarts for me - I used about 5 gallons of tomatoes and about 1 gallon bag of hot peppers and 3 green peppers.

Goodness of hard work

My heart is full.  We spent today doing lovely together-things.  Like everyone putting away laundry!  And Isaac declaring, "I think the toilet is the most interesting thing in the bathroom to clean".  We uncovered our floors, need only to mop them (haha, as Ruby says, "that's for, like, every 3 months or something, right Mom?" Yes, but don't tell people that.) and then we dove into preparation for a great chicken day.  But that's for another day's telling.  The point is, my heart is full of the goodness of hard work beside the people I love.  

Putting the roof on our new woodshed.

I'm so proud of my husband.  He's the kind of man who works all day, drives down our driveway and almost before we realize he's arrived, he's changed into work boots (and a sleeves-cut-off t-shirt) and he's outside working.  So far this spring he's built an enormous woodshed (2 rooms, one for old wood, one for green), cut our giant sycamore tree completely into firewood, created a ginormous garden with 300 linear feet of deer fence (and way too many hand-dug post holes - evil clay), plowed and planted it (with help from his family crew!) - and this doesn't even count all the animal work he's done.  That's for another blog post.  I'm really proud of him.

Just after dropping the giant (dying) sycamore tree so we can start our new garden.

Playing in the tree - next morning I took the kids to the beach, he had the whole tree cut and stacked before we returned.

See where the tree stump is by the dog house?  The kids are relocating our fire pit and you can see the frame on the right of the pastured-poultry pen he built with the neighbor for the 30 broiler chickens we had in the barn.

Plowed and double-axle load of topsoil delivered.

I sawed these lattice boards and nailed them myself!!  Lettuces, dill, sweet peas and 2 cherry tomatoes inside.  These little boxes are for munching.  My goal with the lattice: peas that climb and protection from the chickens.

Sometimes the workers take a little break.

This is Anna in the tomato patch - we planted more than 50 tomato plants.  She's giving Jenny (the dog) an early morning garden tour.  We hoped dog-smell would make the deer afraid to taste our little green miracles until Daddy got the fence up.  Up there you see Jenny surveying a row of baby lima beans.

Thanksgiving Photos

Favorite food. Games and cuddling with grandparents. Silliness. Thankful!!!

Happy Birthday sweet baby

We celebrated Anna's first birthday this week. She is our little delight. "I just love this little one", said her big sister Ruby. Yes, we all agree. Children are a blessing from the Lord. This little surprise of our lives is ALL blessing!Anna got socks and sleepers and a cozy coat - things we needed. And a silly little pink musical princess "car" and a funny little bang-it popper toy and the most delightful, loving homemade treasures from the big kids.

Isaac made her a banner (out of my old business cards) and a card with a bare tree and leaves on the ground that said "as the last leav falls, there's nothin better than cudling (sic) a little girl!"

Ruby made a coloring book for her with pictures of a butterfly, ladybug, bird with worm, log with fungus and flower on it, tree, mushroom. Brilliant (can you tell we studied botany last year and flying creatures this year?). And a rainbow-striped marker-ed picture that Anna loved. And her card said "If you have a little girl, there is nothing better than her having a birthday!"

I made a cake out of the Covered Bridge Cookbook (Roann, IN - my Mom's hometown). And we all loved it and Anna demolished her whole piece and then played peek with her plate!

Chopped Apple Cake

325 degrees, 45 minutes (or a little more)

2 C Sugar

2 C Flour (I used 1/2 WW)

1/2 C oil (I skipped this -by accident)

1 t soda

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t bak powder

1/2 t salt

2 eggs

4 C chopped apples (I used the fugi's that we picked a few weeks ago)

If you skip the oil like I accidentally did, you mix all the ingred except eggs and apples. Beat eggs and stir in apples to coat, then add to dry mix. Pour into prepared 9x13 and bake 45 minutes (or until done in middle - mine wasn't quite). Delicious (with or without Cool Whip) - would be yummy with vanilla ice cream. We ate the rest for breakfast!

Action shots

If it doesn't work in the first post, try again! Took me enough tries to get these marvelous pictures, can't stand not to share them!!

Pictures

It's not like we haven't been doing lots and lots. We just have been doing it instead of blogging it. On our last day of school, we created nature journals. They seized the idea and we had to wake early for a nature hike the next morning. Good thing that we did. These photos document Kevin's amazing bridge. The very same bridge that was lifted by a 4-ft-deep flooded creek just a few days later and carried several feet "downstream". Crazy. The water wasn't even over their boots this day. You can't see Anna because she is in the back pack - wildly kicking her legs and somehow not getting mosquito-bitten on that glorious soft skin.

We had blazing hot days before school was done - poor daddy trapped inside his classroom. We weren't trapped, nope. We played and learned outside. We did pool-introduction for Anna-the-plump. She was quite happy splashing in her own little puddle - looks kind of surprised about it all, doesn't she!

While the bigs did leaping launches into the bigger puddle (pictures will not cooperatively load for me!) - how did it not pop?Anna is clapping. That is old news, though, because now she is crawling. But i don't have any of those photos off my camera and onto the computer yet. I need an assistant for all this memory-keeping. She is also growing more hair that is still blond in the sunlight. That is very sweet and different from the older 3 - just like I asked, "Lord, what if you made this one a different color." I love how God does that.

Sweet Slippers

Look, Aunt Sharon!! Anna likes her felted wool slippers from Maine!!